What to Do When Your Teething Baby Won’t Sleep Unless Held

What do you do when your teething baby won’t sleep unless held at night? Here are 3 steps and remedies when your baby won’t stop crying.

Your baby had been doing so well with her sleep schedule. She was sleeping through the night—in her crib, no less. The rare times she’d wake up usually ended with her going right back to sleep. For months, this was her happy bedtime routine.

But then, her teeth started to poke through, and your once-easy sleeper is now inconsolable.

She starts crying the minute you put her down in the crib. Even if you manage to get her to fall asleep, she’ll only do so an hour at a time. You know a new tooth is growing since she’s displaying all the signs of teething (hello irritability and sore gums!).

To make it worse, even when teething is no longer the culprit, she has fallen into new habits of needing to be held to fall asleep. She has even developed separation anxiety that you’ve been bringing her to your bed, so sleep-deprived and exhausted to do anything else. And forget about daytime naps—you can’t even get one sleep cycle these days.

It’s like you’ve gone backward. Whereas you had been doing so great for so long, now you feel like you’re caring for a newborn baby all over again.

What to do when your teething baby won’t sleep unless held

The tricky thing with teething is that it isn’t a one-time event—your baby will continue to grow teeth for years. Teething also isn’t as clear-cut as, say, monitoring a fever. A quick temperature check can confirm a fever, whereas you need to rely on educated guesses to pinpoint teething.

Any time my eldest was fussy and restless, I kept claiming that he must be teething. Except, to my surprise, he didn’t even have his first tooth until well after he turned a year old.

So yes, teething can be tricky, especially when it disrupts your baby’s sleep routine. What do you do when he needs you to fall asleep after night wakings (like nursing or rocking), yet you find yourself falling into bad habits that leave you exhausted?

Take a look at these tips to move forward when your teething baby won’t sleep unless held. As one parent said about overcoming these sleep regressions:

“I am so glad I found this blog – I am going through this right now (currently day 4) and it’s rough on every level. Thank you for sharing.” -Briana V.

1. Attend to your baby’s needs

It’s easy to lose your patience with teething, considering how often it happens and how ambiguous its symptoms can be (babies seem to drool all the time!). But if you’re more certain that your baby is miserable because of teething, now is the time to attend to his needs.

Because at the end of the day, you would also console him should he have a bad cold or a high fever. Don’t assume that you’re “spoiling” him during this time, or that you’ll forever be stuck with these habits (more on that, later).

Instead, comfort him at all hours as you would any other time in his life when he needs you. Think of it as a temporary stage that will eventually pass.

2. Go back to your old routine

That said, what do you do when you suspect your baby is no longer teething, but has instead grown used to her “new” routine?

Simple: go back to your old one.

Let’s say her tooth has finally come in and you don’t see any other signs of new teeth emerging. Yet she continues to insist on being rocked to sleep or sleeping in your bed every night. Go back to your old routine and re-sleep training if needed.

Whatever method you had chosen to get her to sleep those long stretches at night, repeat the same process. And don’t worry—it’s not the same as starting from square one. If she had already been sleep trained, going back to your old routine won’t take as long as it may have initially taken her the first time around.

But it’s important to go back to your old routine as quickly as possible after teething has passed. These setbacks are going to happen all the time, from illness to developmental milestones to vacations. You’ll constantly be going back to your old routine to reset her good sleep habits every once in a while.

Free resource: Whether you’ve tried to teach her to self soothe in the past or are now considering it, take a look at the 5 key mistakes to avoid when teaching her to self soothe. Grab this resource below—at no cost to you. You’ll also get my newsletters, which parents say they LOVE:

“Nina, thank you for those words. Somehow you knew exactly what I needed to hear!” -Candis G.

3. Ease your baby’s teething symptoms

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Your teething baby might want to be held to sleep all night, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help ease her symptoms, even during the day. By tending to her symptoms, you can prevent many of her discomforts come nighttime.

For instance, you can:

• Offer frozen or cold items. Place a teething pacifier or a washcloth in the freezer for her to gnaw on and soothe her gums.
• Provide teething toys. Amber teething necklaces and rubber teething toys are popular with many moms and babies.
• Give teething biscuits. Is she starting to eat solids? Teething biscuits can give her something to chew on, relieving the pressure she might feel in her gums.
• Switch medicines. Consult with your pediatrician about trying new medicines to see if one works better than the other. Many recommend over-the-counter ibuprofen or acetaminophen like Tylenol or Motrin for fever and as a pain reliever.

What to do when your baby is teething and won’t stop crying.

Conclusion

It can be hard to know what to do when your teething baby won’t sleep unless held suddenly. He won’t stop crying hysterically at night and screams when he’s laid down flat in his crib.

Thankfully, you now know that going back to your routine, balanced with tending to his needs, is key to getting back the sleep you used to have. You won’t be starting from square one, but by going back to your old habits, you can replace the new ones that are leaving you exhausted.

And of course, ease his symptoms during the day, from giving him teething toys to changing his medicines. Any little bit of help and comfort he can find can make his nights more bearable.

When this phase of sleepless nights passes—and it will—your baby can go back to being the good sleeper he had always been!

Get more tips:

• How to Get a Teething Baby to Sleep
• Adjust These 3 Factors to Stop Your Baby Waking Early
• 5 Reasons Your Baby Wakes Up Crying Hysterically
• How to Solve 11 Month Old Sleep Problems
• Baby Wakes Up Every Hour? Must-Know Tips for Parents

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